The Rising of the Shield Hero is a Fantasy-Isekai Light Novel by Yusagi Aneko. It was adapted into 3 Seasons by Kinema Citrus, with the 3rd season having 12 episodes produced.

The series follows Iwatani Naofumi, a young man summoned to a fantasy world where he is chosen to be one of the 4 vassal weapon holders, gaining the title of the Shield Hero.

Season 1 was an enjoyable ride with lots of potential shining for its future seasons. The world-building was good, and the rough difficult start made you root for the MC.

Season 2 was heavily outsourced to DB Movie and plagued with awful direction and a decline in writing.

Season 3 needed to be very good to heal the damages from season 2.

After the Spirit Tortoise arc and the awful New World arc. Naofumi is trying to find and regroup with the 3 stooges: the Sword Hero, the Spear Hero, and the Bow hero. The writing for these characters has been non-existent, their sole reason for existing is to show how incompetent they are compared to Naofumi.

I know of the lore, Naofumi was the 1st choice for his vassal weapon and the rest were the 3rd or 5th choice, the author tries explaining why the other wielders are so shit compared to Naofumi, but this doesn't forgive bad character writing. Having a season to redeem them and characterize them is a good idea! Unfortunately what we have is worse writing, filler-like episodes, and lots of cringe.

A short summary so beware of spoilers:

Episodes 1 and 2 start with a tournament arc and I liked it. The animation was good and the episodes were enjoyable... but then the three stooges had to become relevant again.

The three stooges all have individual tantrums, get manipulated by Malty and there is a baby dragon filler arc,

The Sword Hero goes rogue because his party dies and the proven pathological liar Malty, lies to him. He enters an edge phase from watching too much Berserk of Gluttony but is quickly shown who his daddy is and joins Naofumi's group. Utterly weak and useless, he can't even beat Naofumi's 5th strongest member and is outshined by literal children when they fight a zombie dragon.

The Spear Hero becomes mentally unstable, with a high obsession for Filo, viewing all other women as pigs, and starts calling Naofumi "father". I guess the audience is supposed to laugh? But this is not a one-off side character... he is one of the 4 heroes, someone who will be present in the final arcs. Wow, thank you, this is exactly what I needed The Cupcake Hero.

The Bow Hero… what the fuck. The writing in Redo of Healer is unironically better in comparison. The guy gets manipulated by Malty so unrealistically that you would think he is intentionally trying to get all the low-intelligence speech checks from New Vegas. Cringe, cringe, would be better off dead.

And that's it... the 3 heroes are put in their diapers and are Naofumi's bitches.

The season is uneventful and boring to watch.
Naofumi is lame now, he is consistently put on a leash by other characters to control his temper, trying to convert him into becoming more passive. His aggressiveness and cautiousness were fun to watch, so removing it makes you realize how bland he is.

At least the animation for this season is really good! Kinema Citrus cares for this season, unlike the previous, much better direction and pacing to boot.

The quote “Shield Hero without revenge plot = generic Isekai”. I denied this after Season 1 since this series had genuinely good world-building and cast. Even after the 2nd season I still gave it the benefit of the doubt, but now after this? You really cannot deny it anymore.

It is watchable and entertaining at parts, but the decline in writing is painful to see.